Photoshop Elements 4: The Missing Manual

Selecting Rectangular and Elliptical Areas

Selecting your whole picture is all very well and good, but many times your reason for making a selection is precisely because you don't want to make changes to the whole image. How do you select just part of the picture?

Well, the easiest way is to use the Marquee tools. You already made the acquaintance of the Rectangular Marquee tool back in Chapter 3, in the section on cropping (Section 3.4.3). If you want to select a block of your image or a circle or an oval from it, the Marquee tools are the way to go. As the winners of "Most frequently used Selection tools," they get top spot in the Selection area of the Editor's Toolbox. You can modify how they work, like telling them to create a square instead of a rectangle, as explained in Figure 5-2.

To use the Marquee tools to make a selection:

1. Press M or click the Marquee tool's icon in the Toolbox to activate it.

   The Marquee tool is the little dotted square right below the Eyedropper icon.

2. Choose the Shape you want to draw: rectangle or ellipse.

   In the Options bar or in the Toolbox pop-out menu for the Marquee tools, choose the rectangle or the ellipse to set the shape.

   

   Figure 5-2. The Marquee tools usually make oval or rectangular selections. To make a perfectly circular or square selection, hold down the Shift key while you drag. (If you're in the Elliptical marquee, it's a perfect circle; ...